ShareKraftwerk performing their Multimedia Tour at The Royal Concert Hall Nottingham on Monday 8th June 2026.
Images and Review by Kevin Cooper
Kraftwerk were at the Royal Concert Hall on Monday night to show a sold-out crowd how they had transcended the krautrock era and became known as the most famous electronic music pioneers, laying the foundations for modern music-techno, hip hop and computerised pop.
Delivering a set list that was an immaculate display of electronica, the evening began as founding member Ralf Hutter led the other three members out onto the stage to much applause. Clad in LED neon suits they took their places behind the four equally spaced and uniform podiums that had been placed before a huge screen which dominated the performance.
From the opening sequence of Numbers, Computer World and Computer World 2 from their album Computer World, the performance established its defining qualities; disciplined, meticulous and mesmerising. Following up with Home Computer and It’s More Fun To Compute were songs that predicted way back in 1981 a computerised world of online banking, internet dating and a symbiotic relationship between humans and robots.
Spacelab unfolded gradually, its drifting synth lines paired with expansive, space themed visuals that saw a spaceship float above Nottingham’s Market Square before The Man Machine introduced a sharper, more angular energy as the visuals shifted to stark geometric forms and bold colours, reinforcing their music’s mechanical rhythm.
With a set list that moved through a broad selection of the band’s catalogue, almost like a chronological survey of electronic music itself as Atherwellen was followed by Tango and Electric Cafe. Autobahn came around mid-set much to the delight of the crowd which in its shortened live form, retained a sense of motion with the screen showing a highway with a retro VW and Mercedes Benz as the band played their synthesised rhythmic engine sounds.
On Neon Light’s Hutter’s voice was in remarkable shape as it was on the very personal moving tribute to the late Japanese composer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, a gentle cover of his track Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence which captivated the crowd. This being an all seated event with the instantly recognisable tracks such as Radioactivity, Tour de France and a sequence built around Trans-Europe Express being given an outing, the hardest part was to remain seated.
A fusion of Boing Boom Tschak, Techno Pop and Musique Non Stop closed the set and one by one the band left the stage leaving Hutter in the final spotlight. They encored with the 1978 The Robots which saw all four of them back behind their podiums reminding the crowd that their vision of the future is actually the one that we are all living in.
It has been some time since there has been a better sounding concert with everything exceptionally clear, allowing even the most delicate synthetic textures to carry around the Hall without distortion. With a crowd that had been completely hypnotised from the start to the finish, it had felt less like a traditional concert and more like an exercise in controlled technological immersion.
